


Bright Lights

by harryhotspur



Series: the book of love is long and boring [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Canon-Typical Violence, Dealing With Trauma, Descriptions of Injury, From Joe's POV, Hair Washing, Hurt/Comfort, I am a tiny lesbian - can two tall men even fit in a kind of shitty small bath?, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Returning to Malta (The Old Guard), Softness in a Harsh World, Spooning, Using humour to cope, What Happened in Malta (The Old Guard), let nicky and joe sleep in comfy clothes 2k20, somebody please let these two rest, thoughts of donating your body to a 16th century anatomist, very light bondage in an attempt to deal with the horrors of the 20th century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harryhotspur/pseuds/harryhotspur
Summary: Still reeling and exhausted from the events in London, Nicky and Joe return to Malta. However, the events of the past few weeks are difficult to escape. The past keeps encroaching on the present as Joe tries to process what happened to them. Both of them long for comfort and familiarity, to reconnect and heal.Sometimes all you need is a nice bath...
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: the book of love is long and boring [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917394
Comments: 39
Kudos: 313





	Bright Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a planned five-part series exploring the Five Love Languages through the eyes of Joe and Nicky - this part covers 'Physical Touch'. 
> 
> _Read some meta on here which discussed connotations of the scene where Keane shoots Nicky, in light of this one scene late in the fic could possibly be read as an aftermath of sexual assault, please look after yourselves and skip this part if this affects you_

_Birgu, Malta, 2020  
After London_

‘There’s a bath, Joe!’ 

The echo embedded into his voice by the half-empty apartment made Nicky sound further away than he was. Even so, the warm sound of his excitement made Joe’s heart swell a little. It had been a while since he had heard that tone sincerely instead of twinged with a bravado masking intense fear. 

Joe smiled in response and set their holdalls down on the upholstered bench at the end of the bed. He reached over and pressed a hand onto the mattress. It was comfy enough and made up with soft thin sheets suitable for the Maltese climate. 

As was his tradition whenever they were in a new place, Nicky had started his customary survey as soon as they had shut the door behind them. He started by rifling through the small kitchenette drawers, inspecting and cataloguing a bread knife, a set of paring knives and a corkscrew. _‘You have to see what the bathroom is like_ ,’ Nicky always said with a wry smile. As he disappeared, Joe knew he was looking for exit and entry points, places to hide and evidence of bugs of the crawling and listening kind. Even though he couldn’t see Nicky, Joe could see his movements in his mind. He would now be feeling along the sealant around the taps and judging how much force it would take to rip one out to use as an improvised weapon. Then, checking the window lock with a knowing glance; tapping on the tiled walls to test their thickness; stashing the corkscrew behind the toilet roll. 

Cold, almost clinical, light spilled out from the half open bathroom door. In contrast, the lighting in the main room was dim, but warm and inviting. It spilled down in buttery yellow slats from a standard lamp by the door. The sound of Nicky turning the shower on and off filtered out with the contrasting harsh, cold glare. 

‘Ah, Yusuf - the pressure on the shower is not great...’ 

Joe snorted at him giving the pretense he was just inspecting the amenities. He almost called back: _‘does the hose look strong enough to strangle somebody with?_ ’. Instead, Joe resisted. His sleep deprived brain felt he’d missed the proper comedic timing for it to be seen as a joke. He was also conscious of tempting fate. _Inshallah_ nobody was going to attack them for a good while. 

Joe flopped back onto the bed, letting the mattress take his weight as he kicked his shoes off. This wasn’t usually where they stayed in Malta. It was nice enough. The small apartment was tastefully furnished, with doors onto a balcony from which he knew they would be able to see out across the harbour to Valetta in the morning. Nicky would set up a percolator of coffee on the stove while he went down to a bakery to buy fresh pastries. They would sit on the balcony and enjoy their breakfast as the heat rose with the morning sun. Later, they would take a ferry to Valetta and sit outside a small cafe. Nicky would read and Joe would draw the water-taxis and the passers by. The sea air and familiar scenery would make him feel somewhat anchored again. They would both fall back easily into their centuries old traditions.

Still - it wasn’t home. 

The present circumstances meant they couldn’t return to the old farmhouse outside of Mellieħa which they had owned since the late 1870s. Or was it the 1850s - Joe couldn’t remember. It was one of the only homes they had kept throughout the years. For just over a century, the Spiteri’s, a family they had become friendly with all those years ago, had helped manage it while they were away. It had housed a multitude of cousins, second daughters and aged grandmothers for the first eighty years. In the past two decades, due to Mellieħa’s increased popularity as a tourist destination, it welcomed a rotating international cast of scuba divers, walkers and birdwatchers. Joe and Nicky received regular updates in forms of photos and thank you notes to an email linked to the booking site the house was advertised on. Joe read each one, heartened by seeing others enjoy where he held so many happy memories. The Spiteri’s didn’t ask too many questions about the company which owned the house or the two ‘representatives’ who called to stay infrequently. They usually tried to visit in clusters every generation or so to avoid drawing any suspicions. 

They would have been able to stay no problem if not for what had happened in London. Anything linked to them, however tangentially, was a risk right now.

Still, Joe craved the familiarity of knowing exactly where the floorboards creaked; the smell of the herbs in the garden; the sagging branches of the apricot tree outside the bedroom window. The sound of Nicky pottering about in the small kitchen; the old books which they had left there throughout the years. Unlike so many times in his life, he could remember the exact dates of the months they had last stayed almost twenty years ago. 

Malta had been a staple location of their relationship, the background to times both good and bad. However, the previous time had stood out. Both of them had been burnt out from what felt like the unrelenting onslaught of the twentieth century. Of course, every century had its share of genocides, famines, wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions but something about the twentieth had hit both of them differently. The world had somehow become more connected, more volatile, poised and humming with violent potential. Both of them felt the events of the past century pushing deeply between them like a wedge. 

So they had called the Spiteri’s to see if the house could be free, left Andy and Booker in Amsterdam and set off to ground themselves again. 

They had reconnected in a soft tangle of sheets, in the interconnectedness of their bodies; and desperate hitches of breath. Bathed in the light of the moon, Nicky gently tied a silk scarf around Joe’s eyes, pulled his arms back and tenderly bound them to the headboard. He whispered _I love you, you are so beautiful, the whole world can’t fall apart with you in it_. Joe had shivered with each touch of Nicky’s lips to his skin, each gentle brush of his fingers, each soft graze of his teeth. As Nicky moved painfully slowly inside of him; they both disappeared into a world of their own making. Within that world, the pain and loss of the past century seemed to dissipate, replaced by sweet sounds and interconnected movement. As he tensed against Nicky, hands straining against the restraints, new constellations bloomed behind Joe’s eyes. The centuries blurred together and he was born anew. 

Gasping, he had clung to Nicky’s back as they let both their breathing regulate. Nicky had removed the scarf and kissed him deeply whispering: _you are so good, habibi. My heart, my soul my world_. A deep flush coloured Nicky’s cheeks and his hair clung to the sweat on his brow. Even though he always knew it was there, Joe was floored once again by the love burning within Nicky’s eyes. 

The sounds of the toilet flushing followed by the deep guttural chug of an airlock being released from the taps pulled Joe’s attention away from the past back to the present. The light shifted as Nicky moved into the doorway; his frame sent dark shadows spilling into the room. 

‘You okay?’. They had spoke solely in Italian since they had flown out from Heathrow. 

Joe nodded and replied, ‘Yeah just tired’. 

It was more than that really. Joe knew the man before him well enough that he knew he was aware of it as well. Everything which had happened in London had taken its toll on the both of them. The cold light behind him made Nicky look more washed out and deepened the dark circles under his eyes. In any other circumstances, the image could have been almost poetic - a battered, modern angel haloed with a ring of cold halogen light. 

They were both beyond exhausted. Joe usually fell asleep more readily when they were traveling. However, he was kept awake by the residual anxiety from passport control that has been buoyed by the unnerving reality that their new documents had come from Copely and not Booker. They weren’t going to mention his name this trip. The majority of the flight over, Nicky had slept with his head resting on Joe’s shoulder; their arms linked together across the armrest. Even long after his arm had been overtaken by tingles, Joe had kept holding on. With every slight bump of the aircraft and ding of the announcements, Nicky tensed and shifted against him with a grumble. Joe’s book had lay unopened on the tray table and instead he watched the slow expansion and relaxation of Nicky’s ribcage as he drew in each breath. Joe knew it was stupid - but an uncomfortable sensation in the back of his mind told him if he looked away the breaths would cease. 

The cold light encroached into the room again as Nicky walked forward and unzipped one of the holdalls to retrieve their washbag. The bed creaked and dipped as Nicky sat down next to where Joe lay. Facing away from him, Nicky placed his open palm on Joe’s stomach and rubbed in a lazy circle. 

‘I’m going to run a bath, _habibi_ ,’ he said as he unzipped the washbag one-handed and found what he was looking for. ‘I brought some of that fancy shower gel you like’. 

Joe laughed and felt his stomach rise against Nicky’s hand. With the other, Nicky presented him the bottle to sniff. The rich, earthy smells of oud, vetiver and sandalwood drifted into his nose - grounding him again. He recognised it immediately. 

‘The expensive one - the one “only for special occasions’ I thought we used all that in Barcelona?’ Joe paused, considering the timings. How long ago had it been since they had bought the previous bottle. Ten years? Twenty years? Fifty years? ‘I thought they stopped making it?’ 

Nicky’s hand contracted inwards into a playful tickle. 

‘I found some in London - if the British are good at anything it’s doing anything possible to maintain an old tradition. Luckily this is one of the more worthwhile ones’. He trailed his hand downwards across Joe’s hip. ‘Come join me when you are ready if you fancy’. 

Unwilling to let him go just yet, Joe rolled on his side towards Nicky and looped an arm around his front. Strong breaths rose and fell against Joe’s wrist in a comforting cadence. Nicky responded by linking their fingers together and pulling him closer. They lay there for what felt like a while, enjoying the feeling of closeness they were both craving. A heavy silence inhabited the thin space between them and Joe could tell by the tension in Nicky’s spine he knew something was up. 

‘The light in the bathroom ... it’s not nice’, Joe finally muttered into Nicky’s back. The word ‘nice’ hung in the air, barely able to contain the connotation. 

The silence between them grew heavy, weighed down with implications and too recent memories which didn’t need to be spoken aloud. The cold tables in the lab. The even colder bright lights. Nicky’s screams which were so far away but also far too close. The flickering bright lights. The incessant and then increasingly frantic alarms of the medical monitors. Silence. Bright lights. Darkness. Bright lights. Someone sobbing in pain - was it him or Nicky? He hoped it was him. Bright lights. Pain. Bright lights. Someone coughing and wheezing wetly. Bright lights. _Fuck - where was this pain even coming from?_ Bright lights. Someone calling out in a language long thought forgotten. Bright lights. He couldn’t breathe - _he couldn’t .... breathe_. Bright lights. Bright lights. Bright lights. 

Nicky squeezed Joe’s hand and pressed a soft kiss to his knuckles. The gesture said everything he needed without language. _I am here. I am with you. We are together. We are hurting but we are going to be okay_. 

The mattress shifted again as Nicky stood up. Joe allowed the bed to envelop him further as he pushed his shoulders down and squeezed his eyes shut. He let hot tears leak out and roll lazily across his temples and into his hair. He made no move to brush them away. He was too tired to react - he could only feel. 

Cupboard doors opened and shut with soft clacks mixed with the soft patter of Nicky’s bare feet and he busied himself in the apartment. A lightswitch clicked and then the bed dipped again. With his thumbs, Nicky wiped the tears softly from his face. 

‘Oh _habibi_...’, his voice came thick with concern. 

Joe opened his eyes and looked up at Nicky. He had a mismatched array of candles in his lap. Joe, wiped his eyes again, sat up and inspected them - some were half burnt with bent, blackened wicks and others brand new in plastic and paper packaging. 

‘You can always count on Birgu to have plenty of candles,’ Nicky said sadly as he stood up and fished his lighter out his back pocket of his jeans. With his other hand he inspected a candle and puffed out his cheeks to blow dust from it. ‘Think some of these are older than us, my darling’. 

The smile in Nicky’s voice lightened the air and Joe couldn’t help but smile back in return. They could both make each other laugh even in the most difficult of circumstances. 

“We should come back in October for the festival,’ Joe said, hopeful for an extension of this downtime. ‘All the times we have come here, we haven’t seen it. I am not sure if it even existed when we were last here?’ 

After the harshness of the last few weeks, a city lit only by candlelight seemed like the perfect antidote. 

‘Maybe we should just stay until then,’ Nicky responded as if he had read his mind. ‘We have time’. 

He pressed each of his fingers softly down the top of Joe’s thigh; each soft touch weighed down with centuries of quiet intimacy. His fingers stopped their slow walk down, tapping a slow rhythm just above Joe’s knee. ‘Right, I’m going in the bath. Come join me?’ 

‘Urgh’ Joe sighed and flopped back onto his back. ‘Get it started for us, _habibi_. I know you like to boil yourself - I’ll join you in a bit’. 

Nicky laughed, flashing one of those rare full smiles. Joe laughed as well and kicked his foot out to catch him playfully on the arse as he walked away. Nicky huffed in fake indignation as he took himself off to the bathroom. 

Lulled by the sound of running water, Joe watched from the bed as Nicky placed and lit the candles. Soon the previously cold bathroom was filled with a warm flickering glow. The scents of sandalwood, vetiver and oud drifted lazily around the room. Joe inhaled and allowed the scent to take him to a familiar place. The lab, Booker, Andy, Nile, brokenhearted over her family - all melted away into familiar smells. 

Through the half open door, Joe watched Nicky undress. His body seemed to blur and shift in the flickering light as he removed his polo shirt and let in fall in a puddle onto the tiled floor. With a yawn, Nicky stretched and massaged a sore spot where his shoulder met his neck and tilted his head from side to side. Then, Nicky shifted his legs out of his jeans and briefs and tentatively dipped a toe in the water. Joe heard him sigh deeply as the water enveloped him. He smiled at the soft splashes coming from the bathroom. In Joe’s mind, Nicky kicked his slightly flat feet against the warm water and palmed his hands against the water’s skin like a pond skater. 

To the outside world, Nicky probably seemed unremarkable. His clothes were simple. His hair cut in front of a bathroom mirror or at five euro barber’s shops. His body held the tightly coiled physical potential of battle but relaxed and softened in downtime. Over nine hundred years, Joe had seen standards of beauty change in what seemed as quickly as the seasons. He saw muscled, chiseled but simultaneously smooth men in the movies and in the gay magazines he read in the eighties and nineties. In all that time - he’d only had eyes for one man. 

Now he needed to see him. 

Joe prised himself up from the bed and padded over to the half open bathroom door. Nicky lay back in the bath, eyes closed and hair damp from the steam. His knees were stark white where they protruded from the water; while beneath, his thighs and calves were flushed a deep pink. Through the thin layer of bubbles and the flickering water, little creases ran down his stomach and a line of dark hair travelled down to the space between his hips. 

The candlelight cast deep shadows over Nicky’s face, accentuating his features. His eyelashes looked impossibly dark, and his nose cast flickering shadows across his flushed cheeks. In the light, his face looked almost carved from marble. Joe had never seen anybody more beautiful. In nearly a millennium of art and poetry, he couldn’t fully capture the way he made him feel. Love swelled within him - a deep warm pressure at the bottom of his ribcage. He let the feeling overtake him. His breath hitched in his throat as all the ways the man before he had been hurt passed through his mind. 

‘You want to make sure you don’t fall asleep and drown’, Joe huffed, again pulling himself back with an attempt at humour. 

Nicky mumbled something incoherently then opened one eye and peered at Joe. The light green of his iris danced in the candlelight. He lifted a thin hand laconically out the water, flashing his middle finger towards him. 

‘Get in and stop me then’. 

Joe didn’t need any encouragement. He began to remove his shirt, undid his fly and rolled his jeans down to his ankles. 

Once Joe was undressed, Nicky scooched himself forward in the bath to allow him to slip in behind him. Tentatively, Joe dipped a toe in and tested the temperature - a bit on the warm side but welcoming. He lowered himself in gently and opened his knees so Nicky could fit in the gap between then. A seated version of the way they slept at night. As Nicky moved in a bit of water sloshed over the side of the bath, protesting at the displacement of both their weights. 

They’d been together long enough that sitting like this was not necessarily sexual. The years had made them comfortable in nakedness and the intimacy that brought without it necessarily being a precursor to anything. 

Joe allowed his hands to drift lazily over Nicky’s stomach and chest. He knew this body inside and out - figuratively and literally. He felt each of the indents of his ribs between his fingers. Every rib had been broken on multiple occasions, but they felt the same as the day he died for the first time. Nicky inhaled sharply as Joe’s fingers danced around space between his fourth rib on the left side, the place he had first stabbed him all those years ago. 

His other hand drifted slowly across Nicky’s stomach. He’d probably seen every way a person’s abdomen could be traumatised and the way battered internal organs destroyed the body in return. He’d seen Nicky bleed out internally from aortic dissections after blunt trauma. Seen him die of a perforated stomach, lungs, kidneys, intestines, liver. Crushing, burning, stabbing, blasts, shooting. In Spain, during the Civil War, Nicky had been blown out of his sniper’s perch by a grenade. Covered in blood up to his shoulders, Joe had held two parts of Nicky’s stomach together as his guts writhed and healed underneath his palms. All the while, Nicky screamed as Joe begged him to heal faster or die and come back. 

Nicky leant back against Joe’s shoulder and hummed gently, unaware of his thoughts, and relaxing against his touch. 

Joe reached up and touched the back of Nicky’s head gently where the bullet had exited his skull over two weeks before. His skull felt as intact as it always did - _of course it did_. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen anything like that before. He’d seen Nicky’s pupils blown wide and unequal from severe bleeding on his brain. He’d seen him seize and fall to the ground and be still. He’d seen Nicky’s carotid artery cut; his jugular cut; his throat cut; every bone in his face smashed. It should have been as routine by now as a knuckle skinned on a grater, a toe stubbed on a door frame; a hip bruised on the side of a table. 

Over the centuries he never built up a tolerance to seeing Nicky in pain and he knew he hadn’t in reverse. Nobody should see the one they love die, and he’d seen it too many times. In the moments before Nicky took his first breath again his own breathing stopped and his heart hammered a quick staccato in his ears. Every time, he stared down at glassy eyes; touched cooling already slightly waxen skin; and prayed for him to breathe again. 

Everything which happened with Andy only made the already tight knot of anxiety in his stomach twist even tighter. 

A fuzzy memory from his time in the lab also made everything worse. He had awoken blearily from what he thought was sleep - but it might have been death. The cool table pressed painfully into his cheek. His head had flopped to the side, pulling his neck into an uncomfortable position. Nicky was laid on the table before him, his chest cavity splayed open, skin and ribs pulled back in a living version of an anatomical model. He couldn’t have been alive - he had to have been dead. All Joe had wanted to do was scream but some sedative in his body was keeping him from doing anything. All he could do was lie and drool uncomfortably onto the table while his conscious mind howled soundlessly for him. 

His mind flashed back to Pauda. When was it, the late 1530s, early 1540s? Nicky - then a student at the university - had somehow managed to bring him along to watch one of Andreas Vesalius’s dissections. Joe had felt slightly queasy, distracted by the blood and gore, unable to focus on the lecture. Nicky had watched wide-eyed throughout.

Later, sprawled on their bed in the crumbling room they shared, Nicky had traced the network of veins running from Joe's neck to the back of his hand. He whispered to Joe that he was going to donate his body to the anatomist. Nicky insisted with his help, he could probably figure out the whole of human anatomy in less than a year. From this, think of the treatments - the cures, the end to suffering. And with his help, the bodies of criminals wouldn’t need to be disturbed anymore. 

Joe had been aghast and made Nicky promise he would never do anything like that. _‘Think of the pain'_ he had said, taking Nicky’s face between his palms and brushing his hair out of his eyes. Nicky had replied, with a fierce glint illuminating his pale eyes: _‘Think of the progress..._ ’ 

During this century, Nicky’s martyr complex was an open wound; festering, leaking, and always threatening to turn septic. 

‘ _Think of my pain then, Nicolo_ ,’ Joe had huffed back and Nicky had spoken no more of it. 

Now, almost half a millennium later, his Nicky had been on a similar table. In Joe’s darkest dreams, he’d picked and worried over similar situations. 

Joe hadn’t told Nicky about what he had seen yet.

He didn’t know if he ever would. 

An impossibly soft kiss pressed to his jawbone brought him back to his senses. Joe’s hand slipped off the back of Nicky’s head where he had stopped his exploration. 

‘Falling asleep?’ Nicky asked softly. The waver in his voice highlighted Nicky knew exactly where Joe’s mind had traveled. Nicky’s other hand traced Joe’s inner thigh in small circles. From his touches, Joe could tell Nicky was desperately trying to reclaim some sense of normality, some sense of stability which seemed to be ever threatening to slip away from them. 

Joe shook his head and splashed water over Nicky’s stomach. 

‘Sorry, I’m miles away’. 

Nicky hummed in response and shifted his position slightly as he reached across the bath for the shower head. 

‘Wash my hair?” he asked, knowing how much Joe enjoyed it. He nodded in response and Nicky pushed himself up onto his knees and turned the dial of the electric shower on. Cold water immediately splashed onto Joe’s feet and legs, causing him to hiss at the shock. However, it warmed quickly. 

The last time he had washed Nicky’s hair had been just after Merrick Labs. Joe had driven them to one of their safehouses in such a dissociated state he couldn’t remember whether he was going to Kent, Surrey or Suffolk. They all arrived in the dead of night after taking a roundabout route. It was the safehouse in the half derelict block of flats with the somehow still functioning coin operated electric and gas meter. They’d each searched their pockets but were all out of sterling. By torchlight, Booker had tried to ram odd euros and cents into the meter, then punched it so hard it had almost come off the wall. 

Still angry - Joe had snapped at him to not destroy anything else which had caused Booker to hiss and slink off like a cat into the darkness of the flat. After a gentle touch of Joe’s arm, Nile had also disappeared after Booker a couple of minutes later to make sure he was okay. Andy sat on the mouldering sofa in the dark, pressing a hand to the dressing over her wound. 

Nicky had been so silent but Joe could feel the unreleased rage bubbling inside of him. 

By the harsh light of a battery-powered lantern, Joe led Nicky to the bathroom by the hand. While Joe undressed and hastily tried to shower the worst off him, Nicky stood shaking at the sink and scooped water into his mouth. He swilled it about and spat pink-tinged liquid into the basin. After repeating three, four, five, ten times, Nicky suddenly pivoted, dropped to his knees, and retched dryly over the toilet. Joe instinctively rushed to him and placed a comforting hand on his back as he heaved loudly again. 

‘I’m okay’, he said breathlessly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘You’re not, it’s okay not to be’. 

In the blueish light, Joe could see that Nicky’s bottom lip was quivering. He helped a shaky Nicky stand up; took his hands again and led him across the bathroom. 

Nicky leant over the side of the bath as Joe washed his hair over it in the freezing water. The only thing they had was an old bar of soap. It took a while for the matts and clumps of blood mixed with fragmented bone to soften, leave his hair and disappear in rusty spirals down the drain. Under the cold water, Nicky shivered and his teeth chattered together noisily. From the quick punctuated movements of his back, Joe could tell he was sobbing softly. 

‘I’m sorry, _habibi_ , I’m sorry’, Joe had whispered as hot angry tears pricked the corner of his eyes. He rubbed the bar of soap over Nicky’s hair vigorously, again and again, to rinse away the hideous physical evidence.

This time the water was warm and Nicky’s hair was soft and clean, if slightly greasy from travel to his touch. Nicky hummed as Joe gently massaged the shampoo into his scalp. He gently circled his thumbs over Nicky’s temples up to his forehead and down to the soft tender patch where his spine met his skull. His fingers ghosted along the cartilage of Nicky’s ears, wiping away the suds which had come to rest there. 

‘Mmmhm, that feels nice’, Nicky’s voice was soft and sleepy, made low by pleasure. 

‘Better than last time?’

‘Hmm, much’. 

Wordlessly, Nicky tilted his head forward towards his knees so Joe could wash the lather off. Joe reached down out of the bath and picked up a towel from the floor for Nicky to wipe his eyes. His hair always stuck up at odd angles after it had been washed, Joe smiled and smoothed the errant strands down. 

Joe set the showerhead down on the side of the bath. In response, Nicky turned and squeezed a generous amount of the shower gel onto his palms. He turned around so they were facing each other and massaged the soap into Joe’s chest and stomach. Nicky took Joe’s hands gently in his and washed the length of each arm. His touches were gentle and tender, telling the story of centuries of love and care. Nicky pressed lingering kisses to Joe’s wrists before washing the lather off with a flannel. He took the shower and washed Joe’s hair softly, kneading the lather into his curls. As he did so, Joe felt the worry, trauma and stress of the past few weeks start to slowly bleed away. For the first time that evening he felt truly grounded, no longer plagued by memories but lost somewhere in the familiar rhythms of Nicky’s touch. 

They sat there a while in the cooling water, knees and legs interconnected in a tangle. Joe ran a finger down Nicky’s shin and clasped his ankle in his hands. 

‘I love you’ 

The response came instantly.

‘I love you too’ 

The cadence of those three to four words had passed between them so many times, in so many languages, countries and situations. It should have felt rudimentary by now - but to the both of them, there was a quiet magic every time they uttered them. Contained within those words was the acceptance of the transcendental and ugly parts of both their souls. Every _‘I love you’_ was a quiet, revolutionary, radical act that dragged the ragged edges of a brutal and fractured world closer together. 

Joe reached up, cupped Nicky’s face and kissed him long and slowly. His mouth tasted acrid from travel and tiredness. Their lips and tongues fell into their familiar rhythm, punctuated by slight nips and pulls of teeth. Finally, they pulled apart, resting their foreheads against each other, basking in the silent, understated joy of being safe and close once again. 

When the water had cooled to an uncomfortable level they both got out and dried themselves off. Nicky had left two piles of folded pyjamas on the countertop. Thin cotton t-shirts and shorts perfect for the warm Malta nights. Once dressed, Nicky sat on the closed lid of the toilet and brushed his teeth. Joe watched as Nicky’s eyes half closed and his shoulders sagged as exhaustion overtook him. He brushed his own teeth at the sink as his eyes started to close also. 

Once they were done, he took Nicky by the hand and led him to the bed. He knew Nicky would drop his hand halfway there and dart across the room to check the doors and windows and pick a knife from his assembled collection on the kitchen countertop. 

Joe let him perform his ritual and lay down on the cool sheets. Soon Nicky joined him, slotting easily into the curve of Joe’s body before tucking his chosen implement into the side of the bed. They linked their hands in front of each other, Nicky’s resting on top. 

Somehow, there is an implication that the big spoon is the protector, the little spoon the protectee. Both Joe and Nicky were no strangers to the millennia-old, delicate politics of positions. In a similar way to that extended debate - they saw their sleeping arrangements as a mutual agreement. By throwing his arms over him as Nicky curled against him, Joe said to Nicky: _I’ve got your back_. In allowing Joe to snuggle in at the back of his neck, almost hidden behind his shoulders, Nicky said to Joe: _I’ve got your front_.

They lived by these values, in love and war. 

When content and blessed with a double bed rather than a cramped single, they often moved apart during the night. Separating and coming together throughout dreamless sleep. 

Joe nuzzled the neck of Nicky’s t-shirt and pressed his bare thigh between Nicky’s, enjoying the warmth of skin to skin contact. 

‘It’s nice you're not sleeping in your jeans,’ he mumbled sleepily into the back of Nicky’s neck. 

From the soft rise and fall of Nicky’s back against him, Joe knew he was already asleep. He pressed kisses to the top of his spine, tucked his head in, and allowed dreamless sleep to take over. 

***

Early in the morning, the sounds of the small city rising filtered in through the window. Unusually, Joe awoke first with his arm thrown over Nicky who lay on his stomach, head turned away from him as he snored softly. They had both drifted from their original positions in the night. Joe pushed himself up into a sitting position and observed Nicky sleeping next to him. A calm look covered his face and his hair puffed up in places from sleeping on it when it was wet. 

The early morning sun streamed in through the balcony shutters, bringing with it the sea air, tinged with the smell of baking pastries. 

Nicky pulled in closer in his sleep, mumbling something under his breath. In the night, his t-shirt had ridden up, revealing the small of his back and the loose shorts had clumped around his thighs. The sunlight streaming through the shutters bathed both of them in strips of slatted light. Heart filled with love and gratitude, Joe tucked a strand of hair behind Nicky’s ear and pressed a gentle kiss to the warm skin of his forehead. Nicky shifted slightly in his sleep and a small sleepy smile passed across his face. 

Joe snuggled in closer and uttered a silent prayer. 

_As long as they had each other - everything was going to be okay_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading - this is my first fic in a very long time after a long time away from fandom and creative writing in general. This movie has occupied a lot of my thoughts since I watched it a few weeks ago. It has become a nice bit of comfort in a dark and confusing time and I felt inspired to write for the first time in a while. Sometimes self-care is writing angsty fic about two immortal warriors whose love combats the relentless harshness of the world. This is unbetaed and hasn't been sensitivity read so please do let me know if there is anything off about it. 
> 
> All my targeted advertisements now think I am wanting to go on holiday to Malta. Joe and Nicky are staying in Birgu, also known as Città Vittoriosa, which is across the water from Valletta, the capital. Every year in October Birgu holds a festival where the whole city is lit only by candlelight. The house they own and where the infamous 'What happened in Malta' events happen is in Mellieħa on the north of the island. It was a relatively small village until development was promoted by the British in the 1840-50s, it was probably around this time Joe and Nicky got the house. 
> 
> _Inshallah_ translates as 'If Allah so wills' and is a prayer phrase said when thinking or talking about future goals. From reading Islamic websites I think I have used it in the right context, however, I am not Muslim so please do say if I have used this anachronistically. 
> 
> Andreas Vesalius was a Flemish anatomist who taught anatomy and surgery at the University of Pauda from 1537 to the early 1540s. He performed dissections while lecturing to show students the part of the anatomy he was talking about. De Humani Corporis Fabrica, his book which challenged Galenic thinking on human anatomy, is based on the lectures Vesalius gave at Pauda. From the picture of him in the medical armband in the credits, I see Nicky as a bit a medical nerd / having undertaken medical or nursing training throughout the years. I imagine he found his time in Pauda when Vesalius was teaching very exciting. Vesalius would also probably have jumped at the chance to dissect Nicky's regenerating immortal body. In the 1560s, there was hearsay that Vesalius was forced out of the Spanish court as he has performed a dissection/autopsy on the body of a nobleman who was still alive - so who knows, maybe him and Nicky met up again? 
> 
> I love the dynamic between these two, how they protect and comfort each other in their own way. I hope I have managed to do these characters justice in this fic. I'd love to hear all comments and critiques you all may have.


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